My aunt insisted that there was a method to the madness in her library. And, to her credit, there was something about this place that somehow allowed me to find what I needed to find, even if it wasn’t always what I was looking for. Yet I continued to insist that it could not truly be called a library. Those were places of order, with some sort of system in place for keeping track of the contents. When one thought of a library, one might imagine a room with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, perhaps a table and some chairs. And yes, this room had all that. But the shelves were crammed—sometimes literally—with books, not always with the spine out, and certainly not with even a passing nod to alphabetization or any other comprehensible system. And the tables and chairs were also stacked high—books, papers, and the occasional scroll or big, horking tome. Shoved into the corners were more books, maps, and the occasional curio that I could never tell if it was some sort of valuable artifact or something that had caught her eye at a garage sale. To complete the bizarre image, the room was lit by an enormous crystal chandelier that took up most of the ceiling.
Only one corner of the room was clear—a heavily warded spot that I now knew held a portal of sorts between our world and the demon realm. It wasn’t the type of thing that a sentient creature could come through, but if left unwarded plenty of other things could come through—or be pushed through, as I’d found out the hard way. The best guess was that it acted as some sort of “pressure valve.” Regardless, we now knew that it needed to stay warded and well-protected. I was perfectly fine with leaving it the fuck alone.
Putting the portal out of my mind, I began my search for anything that might help me figure out how to track down another summoner, as well as any references to humans being summoned to the demon realm. I even kept my eyes peeled for any references to strokes, though with my limited knowledge of anatomy and physiology, it was likely that I’d skim right over something pertinent without even realizing it.
After an hour of pulling books and papers off the shelves at random I’d learned that pineapples are classified as berries, that if one should desire to summon a nyssor by the name of Votevha the best possible offering is bacon, and that a whale’s penis is called a “dork.”
Sighing, I did my best to replace everything where I’d found it. Not only was I no closer to finding this summoner, but now I was craving a BLT like crazy. And I didn’t even like tomatoes.
When I came out of the library, Tessa wasn’t in the kitchen. I finally found her sitting cross-legged on a red velvet fainting couch in the front room, with a book in her hand and reading glasses perched on her nose. The boots with the sky-high heels lay in a tumble on the floor in front of the couch. Her eyes flicked up to me and she smiled. “Find anything useful?”